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I once had a character whose twin brother was murdered in front of her in the session the two were introduced, and the rest of the party showed no sympathy, some even insulting her frequently. Having your character cry isn't going to change their attitudes, at least from my experience.
What you should do is murder the rogue who backstabbed you in full view of everyone, as brutally as possible, and tell the rest of the party that you are not weak, and you are not to be trifled with.
This party doesn't sound it it will be swayed by anything other than a show of force, and the rogue is definitely full-on Evil, even if the rest of the party isn't. If you get the jump on the rogue with your strongest spell(s), it should be easy-peasy for you to kill him, and then you're square.
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In extremely cold emotionless circumstances, one way to make people have empathy and feel your pain is to literally force them to SHARE your pain: eg. In a closed room with few exits, you could tell the other characters your tale of woe with tears in your eyes and just as you say "I feel so low that I want to end it all" you take out an explosive device and blow everybody up including yourself! That will have impact and make people think.
QUOTE: The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose - James A. Baldwin
Your party doesn't sound neutral, whether LN, N, or CN, but evil, at least from what you've described. I'm sure they'd argue tooth and nail that they're just neutral, but what they've done goes beyond simple self preservation into actual evil territory.
As for breaking down and crying, that's not going to do much. If you're actually having fun with this group, then I'd recommend quietly preparing spells that will keep you and you alive alone. Otherwise, your character WILL die at some point thanks to these guys. Maybe you could even join the villain.
If you're not liking this group though (I surely wouldn't), I'd honestly say you should break away from them.
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No. Just no. N-O. No.
The group has decided to make you the victim of bullying. Abuse, as you say. They get their jollies from seeing you weak emotionally. How it affects you. Getting you to cry would be the absolute best possible result for them, and you will get NO sympathy. After crying, they KNOW they can push your buttons.
Get out. Run, don't walk. Don't stay a moment longer than you need to. And even murdering one of the other characters will not get you sympathy, they will just decide you are a problem and kill your character. And laugh about it.
Take some good advice and leave.
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No. Just no. N-O. No.
The group has decided to make you the victim of bullying. Abuse, as you say. They get their jollies from seeing you weak emotionally. How it affects you. Getting you to cry would be the absolute best possible result for them, and you will get NO sympathy. After crying, they KNOW they can push your buttons.
Get out. Run, don't walk. Don't stay a moment longer than you need to. And even murdering one of the other characters will not get you sympathy, they will just decide you are a problem and kill your character. And laugh about it.
Take some good advice and leave.
Yeah, pretty much this. Get out.
I can't second this enough. Your group is toxic, none of this is good for health, mental or physical.
Suggest to your group a different medium of play. PbP (Play by Post) sounds like it might solve some of your groups issues with bad roleplay.
You join the BBEG (and retire the character). Or open a bookstore, but that's less exciting.
Look at it this way. You're in a relatively unforgiving and hostile world. Outside the normal bounds of civilization is a cruel and violent environment eager to eat you and your soul. Yet you venture out into this hazardous wilderness because of (loot, bbeg going to destroy the world, more loot, whatever). Now, venturing out alone is already risky enough, but your character is currently choosing to go out with people who have actively tried to attack them (physically or otherwise). WHY WOULD YOU CONTINUE DOING SO!? Seriously, it's like saying "oh surviving on a deserted island is too easy. I'm going to remove one of my arms and get an infected leg to make it better." And you know what? Now you and the BBEG have something in common. Turn it a little more, and you both have a common enemy in the existing party, so a team up of the two of you makes a decent amount of sense, especially if your character isn't power hungry, and just looking to keep themselves alive. They'd make a good lieutenant.
THEN you talk with the group and figure out what the hell they're trying to do. You all want to roleplay? Sure, fine, then learn to be part of a team. You'll need to learn that outside of gaming anyway. So what do you (plural) get out of playing a roleplaying game? Do you just like playing the combat, pitting stats on stats in a tactical turn based skirmish? Do you want to make connections to a fantasy world? To fantasy characters?
If your party wants to RP, but isn't due to OOC chaos, you're not going to solve that IC. That's something you need to bring up OOC first, and get everyone to realise and put more effort into having a cohesive, RP-friendly group. Then, once everyone's all together on that, you can have it be an in-game turning point by having an emotional moment. But just leading with that isn't likely to change things.
Are you trying to provoke the characters or the players?
I ask because you have to realize that the character is not the player, and even if the player feels bad, that is not the same as their character feeling bad. It would also make things awkward in real life.
If you have a real life issue with the teasing then you should mention it out of character. In the groups I have been in there is a decent amount of smack talk in character, but everyone knows it is just in character.
As an example I had two players with one playing a dwarf and the other playing an elf. They did the old elf-dwarf rivalry, and would compete on who got the most kills, and accuse the other of stealing kills if one person did 90% of the damage. If one or the other went unconscious it was a setup for more ribbing.
As another example I had a "know it all" character who would always tell the other characters how to do their jobs. He would ask the fighter to come see him if he wanted to learn how to properly use a sword, and talk down to any caster who did not have the right spell for the situation. However if my character did something wrong he would blame someone else or just claim it was back luck. In character he was meant to be annoying, but everyone knew it was just in character.
If you just want more character depth from everyone's character then you may have to accept that the rest of your group does not care for that.
I see that I should have read the entire OP and not just skimmed. The backstabbing is not good at all unless everyone agrees to be onboard with it from day 1.
I would definitely say something about it, and if I didnt like the conclusion I would leave the group.
Ok. So. While I agree with pretty much everyone here, that having a breakdown rp moment is highly unlikely to do anything (they did say they're fine with you dying after all), you seem sort of dead set on this course of action, so I'll oblige and give my thoughts.
For you, I'd wait for a moment where they betray either you or another npc again. This is when your character could "break". Having been offered as sacrifice so coldly before, your character is starting to realize just how screwed up these people are. When this moment of betrayal occurs, its clicks. Moving from "it's possible they're all evil jerks" to, "they ARE all evil jerks".
You could stop suddenly in realization, staring at them, in extreme disappointment, disbelief and, yes. Hate. This isn't going to be a sad cry, mind you. This should be a frustrated, angry tears. The sadness only stemming from your character realizing that they've stuck together with these moral degenerates for so long without doing much about it. Tears begin to well at your eyes, and they'll probably turn around and insult you for stopping, asking what you're doing. That's when you snap. Something like:
My character stands there, staring at them in disbelief of their negligence and cruelty, "What?!" she shouts, "You want to know what's going on? I'll tell you! I've just realized that you're the enemy. The lot of you. You're only a few shades worse than what I try to stop every mission from reaching innocent people. You abuse me, you tried to kill me, and I..." she pauses quivering, hatred, sorrow and frustration dripping from her words and expressions as tears roll down her face, "I just let you do it. I let you use me."
After a moment of self reflection, she shakes her head, apparently in realization and understanding, "I thought you meant well. That while you may be selfish, that there was something of worth in each of you, driving you to help others. But I can see that I was wrong. There is nothing of worth in any of you and I've wasted my time, my life, helping you. Supporting you. Once this mission is done, I will leave you. What happens to you from this point on," she says, stoicism hardening her features, a few less tears streaming from her face, "It doesn't matter. I don't care."
Just something off the top of my head. I do implore you to have this character leave them if they don't show any sympathy or understanding. Like. Immediately. In the dead of night. Or preferably when a monster has them busy.
Anyways, I still agree with the others here, it'll probably not go well, and likely you'll just get laughed at and maybe even attacked or killed when convenient. Doesn't seem like a group to play a cooperative game with. Which is what pathfinder is (or at least should be) largely about. Good luck either way.
just disbanding a party is kind of like the worst possible thing you can do in game.
No, playing in a game that you don't enjoy is the worst possible thing you can do in a game.
I could leave right now, and the party would split three ways, but that doesn't actually solve anything.
Yes it does. If the whole party disbands you can point out to the party: "Look, we created a group of characters who didn't want to work as part of a team for a team game. If you guys want to try this again, we need to create characters that are reliable, trustworthy & have each others' backs. But you've seen how the selfish game plays."
Give as good as you get.
They don't want to be grateful when you save someone's life. Fine. If they don't value the service, don't do the service. And rub salt in by being first to call dibs on the dead Bozo's equipment.
They want to use people as meat shields. You are far better at that game then they are. Once they've pinned down several monsters in melee. Let loose an area effect spell. Thank them for the way that that they created the opportunity afterwards. And make sure you are first to call dibs on a dead PC's equipment.
As you get to higher levels, your ability to screw them over more than they can screw you over should teach them to play nice.
Don't get mad, don't get whiney, get even. And if they complain, suggest a nice friendly one off session of Paranoia to let tempers cool down.
You could make this work. You used to be rather passive but now you are completely paranoid and have reached your breaking point. Hell, I'd give you the paranoid insanity from the gamemastry guide.
If this was all planned and ok then I'd tell you to prepare some invisibility, some fireballs, and murder them. However, I Gotta say leaving is the healthiest thing to do. I BAN PvP in my games for this specific reason.
Instead of just leaving, tell them you aren't having fun, and see if you can get them to stop being dicks to you. If they don't, then leave.
Remember, If you fail to communicate the problem there is never a chance to find a solution. They think its all ok, it isn't. Tell them, and if they don't change you need to walk.
Lorila,
Breaking up the group is hardly the worst thing you could do.
Keeping a bad group together is the worst thing you can do.
Ditch the rogue, if the player pitches a fit, ditch the player.
If you get no support, ditch the game.
If you don't do something you WILL end up losing friends in RL.
This may not be an entirely bad thing for you.
I really would suggest trying to find another group. It sounds like they're just not interested in the kind of game experience you want to have, and are more interested in being murderhobos. I don't see any way you can "get back" at them that won't end in PvP.
If you really want to resolve it, you might want to try an OOC chat with them about how you're feeling about the game, but I don't know if that will help much. Honestly, their behavior sounds kind of jerky to me. Games are supposed to be fun for the whole party.
I have plenty of people I'm good friends with but don't play Pathfinder with because our playstyles just don't match. At this point, I think leaving is probably your best option.
Just leave. Leaving is best. If you have to stay, however, play by their rules.
In this group, the strongest rules. Play an optimized character and force everyone into respecting you out of raw power.
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Pathfinders fault is that it's upfront appeal is system mastery and tactical maneuvers. It's difficult to get emotionally invested in something you treat as a pragmatic problem that needs to be solved.
There's also a degree of maturity and vulnerability that most man children don't want to expose in public. Being an indifferent murder hobo is a good protective front to brush away any prickles behind they eye.
I do remember playing a game and one guy had to leave the table because he couldn't deal with the family fued tension that might of hit to close to home in his personal life.
Gotta find the right group for that particular mood you're going for OP.
From OP's description, this sounds like a pretty toxic situation, honestly. The other group members sound like jerks, and I jhave a hard time believing that their jerkish behaviour is only manifested in in-character (IC) behaviour, without any bearing on what they are like out-of-character (OOC)
Even if I accept the notion that what is happening is IC-only, this might explain remaining friendly with the other gamers OOC, but it doesnt really explain why you would want to continue playing a game with them that doesn't align at all with what you want from it.
I agree with other posters that getting emtoional IC isn't likely to influence either the players or their murderhobo characters. Instead, my view is that you either need to:
(1) have an OOC chat about how the game is going and what your expectations are from it, and see if you can bring people onside to change the way you are approaching the game to create a more cooperative experience (and maybe develop some rules about PvP violence, etc, so those issues do not arise again); or
(2) accept that your group isn't looking for the same type of game you are, and either leave the game, or embrace it and join in the backbiting, murderhobo-y mayhem.
I'd probably try to have the direct chat OOC, and then leave the game if things didn't change as a result. Doesn't mean you can't remain friends with these folks, but I agree with the sentiment that no gaming is better than bad gaming.
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I'm happy I read this thread. I will be using oocly and ICly from now on. Some people are entirely oocly AND icly. In game AND IRL. ;P
I do not think having your character break down in front of the other characters would do anything but make them laugh and mock the wizard more. They've already expresely stated that they don't care about the wizard, they they are ok with them dying, they they are ok with killing them. They would not care if the wizard was upset, in fact it would only amuse them
If you are dead set on sticking with this party (I wouldn't but if you say they're your friends...) I would suggest getting a diary. Every time they do something mean, every time your character is insulted, tell them that the wizard writes in his diary. Hurt the wizard, he/she pulls out the diary. Mock the wizard? Writing in the diary. Make fun of the wizard for having a diary? Describe the wizard writing it all in the diary.
Eventually they will steal the diary to read it aloud in mockery.
At which time they will learn the only thing written in the diary is page after page of Explosive Runes
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I would kill the rogue in his sleep or poison his food/water. The rogue would die, at the least. One way or another I'd put him in the grave for his betrayal. Hell, I would probably just kill the entire party since they hate your wizard so much they want him to die. Then have your Wizard go join the Evil one with the heads of the others.
Then everyone rolls new characters. Now you will get the chance to see if all their characters are just them on paper, or if they can actually role play.
Is it still the same group as in July? Because if nothing improved since then, this just supports the 'RUN' advice. Stop analyzing, stop looking for options, stop hesitating, just do yourself a favor and leave them. You will find a better group sooner or later.
Yeah, I see this issue among people who are "neutral" aligned. Best bet: Walk away. Find another group. Play online.
Neutral means (IMO) that even though you're looking out for number one, you recognize that working as a TEAM represents the best bet for survival. Only evil characters act in the manner you describe.
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Lorila , do you know color spray? Do you know what your dc and their saves are? Figure out their chance to fail, and if it is low enough, next time a fight happens, stand back, hit as many of the party as you can.
The fun thing is you don't even need to tell them what spell you cast unless they succeed at the spell craft check. So if someone falls over but most are still standing, cast it again. Once half the party is out cold, leave. Let the encounter slaughter those that stand and then those on the floor.
This is the most extreme solution to your problem. The best bet is always talk OOC. That should be your first option.
Even at lvl 4 you can arrange the death of everyone else in the party.
Remember. Wizards are smart. They win by having a plan that targets weak spots. In this case that is taking them by surprise, hitting as many as you can with their weakest saves, which is probably Will.
People also go to sleep sometimes. You don't need to kill them yourself even. When it comes to your turn to take watch, go for a walk, find the evil guy and tell him your party is all asleep, and you will tell them where if he takes you on as a 2nd in command or some such.
Watch as your party is woken up by ogres tearing their limbs off. Then saunter in, pissed on the corpses and take all the loot to share with your new friend and boss.
I have seen more cohesion in an evil campaign. Any campaign will only work if the characters have a reason to be working together.
My 2 cents. Also I am going to send you a personal message shortly
I've had a character cry in a game.
Bit of a side mission involving our teams utility white necromancer (NG Pharasman cleric), Pharasman Inquisitor and monk that puts down the dead buddy copping it in Abalsom to stop a 10 year curse before it can claim any more victims and to get the soul of a hanged man on their side (Hangman's Noose), the monk ends up trapped in the Court house.
The necromancer goes missing. Long story short the monk takes names and punches throats revealing the seedy deeds long forgotten.
The necromancer however came across an even bigger crime. Turns out since the Court house disappeared he decided to do a spell to check the biggest sources of undead in the area.
And it lead him to a Koblak lair.
When the Monk tracked him down he found him sitting on the corpse of a Koblak, crying his eyes out, surrounded by attic whisperers, dozens of them who were all nuzzled up to him and listening to a hoarsely whispered bed time story.
When not putting down the dead the character ran an orphanage and part of his theme was basically that he could speak to the dead as they were when they were alive (Feat that let him use diplomacy on Undead) the GM utterly pushed his buttons.
When the Inquisitor gently insisted they'd be better off sent on their way to the Boneyard, Necromancer out and out refused (And shockingly got the Inquisitor to back down) and has been working on some serious efforts to redeem them and give them a semi-normal life, delving into some very ominous grey areas to do so. He hasn't lost his Grace from Pharasma yet but half the party thinks its only a matter of time.
He's basically aiming for the good ending of Bioshock, except with the undead, if things go well. If not, well.
It won't go well for anyone.
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Craig's list is a thing and though that I actually have a very good group that I play with.
You are in a horrible group and should tell them that they have pushed your character to the point of a psychotic break and they seem to have striped the fun of the game. Leave that group and never look back.
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Heck, after reading all the posts, Get Out is the clear choice. I wouldn't even tell them I was leaving just stop showing up. Find a better group and never look back!
In the end, you should be happier and have more fun than always worrying if the asshat rogue is gonna shank you when he feels it will save his hide.
I hope things work out for you which ever route you go.
~ W ~
Forgetting all the GET OUT! advice you have gotten (which frankly I more than agree with) if you do want to continue playing with these people then consider the following. Your character is an actual person in an actual fantasy world somewhere that has real feelings, emotions and most importantly a working brain.
No one would stay with a group of people that actively tried to kill them or agreed with the almost murder attempt on that person's life. So using common sense logic your character would leave the group at a minimum and most likely either kill the group on the way out or at least kill the rogue.
Your group needs to have a session about how to role play. This situation you are describing is toxic and could easily lead to "can't you take a joke?" to some RL hard feelings or fights.
Games are meant to be fun. Roleplay games generally have a group of characters that enjoy each other and want to either save the world or do something heroic. This kind of behavior of murderhobo is just not what Pathfinder or any decent game is about.